Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales Page 4

  My parents got around the limitations in a pragmatic way. Three years after I was born my mother gave birth to twin girls, Beth and Jill. A compulsory abortion would have been standard procedure but, in a freak error, the technician did not identify the second fetus at the single pre-natal exam my mother’s health care ration allowed. So my sisters, both born alive and healthy, were something of a surprise.

  With my father in a responsible position for a major government contractor, he was able to obtain a waiver legitimizing the births. We were lucky—a less educated and affluent family would have been subject to a mandatory termination for one of the twins.

  My childhood was a pretty normal one for the middle class. My father worked long hours, but his position allotted us almost 70 square meters of living space within the safety and comfort of the Protected Zone. We were happy and content, and my earliest memories are pleasant ones of family and childhood. That happiness came to an abrupt end shortly after my eighth birthday.

  When they were four years old, my sisters became infected with a strain of the X-2 super-virus. Developed as a bacteriological weapon during the Unification Wars, the virus caused a deadly disease commonly called the Plague, though it was far deadlier and more difficult to treat than its historical namesake. Although the frequency of infection had declined dramatically in the decades since the virus had last been employed in war, it was still a serious health problem throughout the world. Advances in medical technology and treatment had reduced the mortality rate from 100% to approximately 50%, but no outright cure had ever been developed. In many cases the survivors suffered serious damage to vital organs and other bodily systems.

  My sisters were young and strong, and they both survived the disease itself. Unfortunately, though Beth recovered fully, the virus virtually destroyed Jill’s liver. Her only hope of survival was a transplant or regeneration. While organ regeneration had been perfected in the previous century and offered a near-100% success rate, it was extraordinarily expensive, and my family’s health care ration did not allow the procedure. As a third child, my sister’s medical priority rating was extremely low, so even a transplant was out of the question. In the government’s analysis, my sister’s life simply wasn’t worth the resources required to save it, particularly since my parents would still have two other children.

  My parents didn’t give up though. Black market organs and cut rate transplants were readily available outside the Protected Zone. Though illegal and dangerous, it was the only way to save Jill’s life, and my father and mother didn’t even think twice.

  A black market transplant was still expensive, and my parents sold everything we owned and borrowed every credit they could. My mother even tried to go back to work. She had been an assistant chef at the Plaza Hotel before she married my father, but with more than 50% of the population unemployed the government allowed very few two income families. When my parents were married, my mother lost her work permit.

  My mother and father did what any parents would do—they scraped together the money. My father requested additional work assignments, usually almost impossible to get, but thanks to a huge contract for the guidance system in the new Gettysburg class battleship, he was able to get an extra four paid hours a day. With her experience at the Plaza, my mother was able to get some unauthorized and illegal jobs catering for various functions. Somehow, and I was never quite sure how they managed it, they put together enough money to fund the transplant, which in true black market fashion had to be paid for in full upfront.

  The operation was performed secretly, in a storage room instead of in a hospital, but in spite of the less than ideal conditions the transplant was successful. Extensive drug therapy was required to force acceptance of the poorly matched organ, and the high dosages caused permanent damage to her immune system. But she was alive, and with proper medication, which would also come from the black market, she could live something approaching a normal life.

  Just when it seemed that everything would work out our world fell apart. I never knew exactly what happened, but the authorities found out about the illegal operation, my mother’s freelancing … everything.

  We were in the closing years of the Second Frontier War and the government was looking everywhere for revenue. So my parents were offered the chance to pay a large fine and escape further punishment. Having just spent every mil they had on the surgery, there was no way they could come up with the demanded funds.

  I vaguely remember the inquisitor visiting us. My father told me to stay in the room I shared with my sisters and not to come out until he came back for me. It didn’t matter that my parents had been desperately trying to save the life of their child. They had broken the laws, and that was all the inquisitor cared about.

  After he left, my father came in and told me to go to bed. I wasn’t even nine, but I could tell he was scared. It was the first time I’d ever seen my father afraid of anything. I knew something terrible was happening, but I didn’t say anything. I just said goodnight to my father and got into bed. He whispered, “Goodnight,” and turned off the light on the way out. Laying there in the dark I could hear my mother crying in the next room. All night I could hear my parents talking and the sounds of them walking around the apartment. Most of all, I remember my mother’s sobs.

  The next day six armed government marshals summarily seized all of my parents’ property including their occupancy rights to the apartment. My father was terminated from his employment (his job was excellent and could easily be sold to another qualified candidate), and our residency permit was revoked.

  We were forced to leave the Midtown Protected Zone. I will never forget the image of the five of us huddled together as the 77th Street gate slowly slid open. I remember taking a last look behind me before my father wrapped his arm around my shoulder and led me out over the cracked pavement north of the gate.

  Northern Manhattan had once been densely populated, but now it was mostly abandoned. The two kilometers immediately north of the wall had been completely razed during the Disruptions to prevent rioters and gangs from sneaking up on the Protected Zone. It was an eerie landscape of ancient, crumbling roadways and scattered pillars of broken masonry—the remnants of demolished buildings that had once housed thousands. There were deep trenches in several places where the ground had collapsed on abandoned underground rail lines. Partially filled with putrid brown water, they looked like nightmarish canals making their way northward.

  A clear plastic tube ran to the northeast, raised 30 meters above the ground on massive steel pillars. The magtrain connected the MPZ to Fort Tyron Transit Center in the northwest corner of Manhattan Island. Fort Tyron was the terminus for bullet trains from other major cities as well as a major freight handling center, and the magtrain brought passengers and supplies into the city 24 hours a day.

  But we were heading northeast, not northwest. My father’s friends had helped him get a job in a basic materials factory in the South Bronx, located in a neighborhood informally known as The Devil’s Playground.

  There was no mass transit operating north of the Zone, other than the magtrain, so we had to walk six or seven kilometers to the bridge over the Harlem River and then into the Bronx. There were a few clusters of occupied buildings along the way, like small villages on the outskirts of the MPZ, but mostly there was just debris from structures that had been demolished or simply collapsed. The bridge itself was old but sturdy-looking, and the Manhattan side was protected by a gate and a small guard tower. It was occupied by a squad of police rather more heavily armed than those who patrolled inside the Zone. My father showed the guards our papers, and after a cursory inspection we were ushered across.

  The Bronx side was unprotected, and while the immediate area around the bridge was cleared, about a hundred meters from the river we started to walk past ancient, but occupied, apartment buildings scattered among burnt-out shells and rubble-strewn vacant lots.

  It was early afternoon, and there were some people moving abo
ut their business. It was very sparse and nothing like the crowded bustle of the MPZ. Along one broad avenue there were a number of businesses, mostly stores carrying various supplies, but also a small medical clinic with a long line snaking out the door and extending a good 30 meters down the street.

  Everything was old and dirty, and the streets were pockmarked with deep ruts and holes. There was a faint reek in the air, from old leaking sewer lines among other things. Compared to the ordered cleanliness of the Protected Zone, the neighborhood was a nightmare.

  We moved into a fourth floor apartment in a decrepit 300-year old building five blocks from the ruins of Yankee Stadium. There was a small lobby with a single light fixture hanging from a wire and the wreckage of an elevator that looked as if it hadn’t functioned in a century. There was a single staircase, old and rickety, but still standing … at least as far as the third floor. From the third floor landing there was a hastily-erected wooden ladder used to access the fourth and fifth levels. My parents tried to be strong for us, but my mother started sobbing uncontrollably when she saw our new home. My father was silent. He helped my mother up the ladder and then carried my sisters up one at a time. I climbed up myself, before he came back for me, but he reached over and helped me up onto the landing.

  My father was ludicrously over-educated for his new job managing the outdated technology systems of the plasti-steel plant, but he was lucky to have any employment at all. As violators of multiple statutes, my parents were not eligible for any form of government assistance, so without a job we would go hungry. I don’t recall hearing my father complain about working 12-hour shifts for sustenance wages, but I don’t remember ever seeing him smile again either.

  The neighborhood was a nightmare, totally overrun by warring gangs. It had been eighty years since the police department had withdrawn from regular coverage of the areas outside the Protected Zone, and the gangs completely owned the place. My parents quickly learned that residents paid the local gang leader for protection if they wanted to survive, and if two gangs were fighting over the turf, they paid both just to be safe.

  Long before the police departed, most other city services had already been suspended. There was no operating mass transit, no real hospitals, and no outside lighting. The streets had deteriorated to the point that they were impassible to vehicles, and in many places even walking was a challenge. There was an electrical grid of sorts, and we usually had about 4 hours of power each day, though there were times we went a week or more without. We had battery-powered heaters, so if the electric stayed off for a couple days in winter we couldn’t recharge them, and we just bundled up against the cold. The water service was usually working, though we only had hot water if the heaters were functioning. It was brackish, untreated water, but filtering it helped considerably, leaving just a mildly oily taste.

  Most of the residents of the neighborhood were Cogs, uneducated workers born there who worked at menial and dangerous jobs. The Cogs had a life expectancy less than half that of Zone dwellers. But there were Outcasts as well, skilled workers like my father who had been expelled from the MPZ for one infraction or another and who now survived however they could in a world for which they were wholly unprepared.

  Then there were the Gangs. There wasn’t a lot of hope in the neighborhood, and to many the Gangs offered the promise a better existence … or at least the chance to be one of the bullies instead of the bullied. Life in the Gangs was violent and usually short, and Gang members caught by the authorities were typically summarily executed. Still, there was no shortage of recruits.

  The Gangs fought each other also, and two of them warred over our neighborhood—the Reds and the Wolfpack. The Reds were bigger, but the Wolfpack seemed smarter and better led, and there was a stalemate between the two, neither able to gain an advantage. The constant warfare was hard on the locals, who not only bore the extortion from both sides, but were also stuck in the crossfire.

  For three years my family lived in this new reality, and as people usually do when confronted with a previously unimaginable situation, we adapted. The lost luxuries of life in the Zone were slowly forgotten, and we began to learn how to make life bearable in our new home.

  My mother never really accepted things, and she withdrew more and more into herself, until she barely spoke at all. But my father tried tirelessly to make our lives more comfortable. The work, the regret, the resentment … I know it devoured him, but he never really let us see that, and he never quite gave up.

  My father was an educated man, and I think the fact that his children would not have that was the hardest thing for him to accept. With no significant schooling available outside the Zone, my sisters and I would have little hope of a better life. A hard life of menial labor in one of the ancient factories was the best we could hope for, and my father couldn’t accept that. Despite the hours he worked, he made time to tutor the three of us every day. Somehow he even scraped up enough to buy me a small solar-powered infopad, and I’d sneak up to the roof and connect to the Net whenever I could. For three years, that was our life, and as much as possible, it became normal to me.

  I was up on the roof with my ‘pad late one day. My mind wandered into a daydream, and I wasn’t really paying attention to what I was reading. I was gazing absent-mindedly across the sea of battered, half-standing buildings that stretched as far north and west as I could see. Then I heard it. A quick shout … then a crashing sound, and after that, a blood-curdling scream.

  I jumped up and ran to the hatch that led back into the building. Grabbing the rope handle, I yanked it open. Gunshots, then more screams. I climbed over the edge onto the ladder, listening to my raspy breathing and feeling my hands go numb from panic. More shots. No more screams, just scuffling sounds and a door slamming. In my rush I put my foot down too hard on a half rotten rung, and it snapped in half. I tumbled off the ladder about halfway down to the top floor landing. My ‘pad slipped out of my hand and shattered when it hit the floor.

  I was stunned for a minute. When I tried to get up I realized I’d twisted my ankle. The fall probably saved my life. By the time I managed to get downstairs, it was over.

  I managed to get up, favoring my injured ankle, and climbed down the ladder to the fourth floor. A sharp pain ran up my leg with each step, but between fear and adrenalin I wasn’t slowed by it. I could hear the thunderclap of my heart in my ears as I hopped off the ladder onto my good foot and stumbled to our apartment. Our door had been kicked open and was hanging loosely at an angle. It was still connected to the frame by a single hinge, like a child’s tooth almost ready to come out. Inside, the apartment was a nightmare.

  There was blood all over the floor and walls. The furniture was knocked over and scattered around, and the tattered rug was covered with the shards of what looked like every breakable item in the place.

  My mother was in the kitchen, lying on the floor next to the counter. There was blood all around her, and though I could tell she was dead, I couldn’t see exactly where she’d be shot. I couldn’t bring myself to touch her or even look, and I forced myself to turn away. That was the last glimpse I’d have of my mother.

  I stumbled back out into the main room and saw my father. I’d missed him when I first ran into the apartment. He was lying next to an overturned desk, looking straight up at me, lifeless eyes wide open and two bullet holes in his head.

  The whole thing is a blur to me now, and I really don’t know how long I was in the apartment. It could have been just a few minutes, or it could have been much longer. To this day I really can’t remember. I frantically looked for my sisters, and I found them in our sleeping room, lying under the remnants of the mattress, where they’d been shot at least ten times as they tried to hide. There were bloody pink bits of foam everywhere.

  After 30 seconds, five minutes, an hour—I really don’t remember—I stumbled out of the apartment. I didn’t take anything with me; I didn’t even look to see if we’d been robbed of our meager possessions. I just hobbl
ed out into the hall, down the ladder and stairs, and out into the street. It was a sunny day and I recoiled from the brightness that assaulted my eyes. In a daze, I ran around to the back of the building into the dark comfort of the shade, and I fell roughly to my knees and bent over as my stomach emptied.

  I must have wandered around for days—or weeks—stumbling through the streets, scavenging something, anything, to eat, hiding at night in whatever spot I could find. I never went back to the apartment, or even near the building.

  At first I was sure I was going to die, and truth be told, I didn’t really care. More than once I thought to myself, just lie down and stay there until it’s over. Or climb up to the roof of one of the buildings and end it in an instant. But something kept me going, pushing me forward. It’s not like I really had hope or any real reason to live.

  As time went by, though, I became better at living in the streets. I found relatively secure places to stay. There was an endless labyrinth of abandoned tunnels and chambers under the city. They were filthy and rat-infested, but they were shelter of a sort. I learned to steal too, first for survival, but in time I began victimizing the Cogs for no particular reason, stealing things just to vandalize and destroy them. I was angry and I could, so I did.

  Eventually I hooked up with the Wolfpack, and over the next five years I committed every manner of crime and outrage imaginable. The less said about those years the better, so we’ll just say I was angry at the world and felt I owed it and its inhabitants nothing but retribution. The Cogs were helpless and easy to target. They were there for me to use and exploit, like a crop in the fields, and that’s how I lived for a very long time. The fact that they weren’t responsible for anything that had happened to me didn’t matter.

  Life in the gang brought with it a crude sort of luxury. It was nothing like the clean and orderly environment in the MPZ, but we took over the buildings we liked, and stole whatever we wanted to fill them. If anybody complained, we killed them. Simple.